No abstract

This paper provides the results of two studies designed to evaluate a newly constructed self-report instrument, the Sexual Abuse Questionnaire (SAQ). The SAQ was designed as a brief screening device to aid in the identification of a childhood sexual abuse history. A "unique" feature of the SAQ is the inclusion of a number of non-face valid questions derived from clinical experience. Both studies used an undergraduate population of self-reported abused and non-abused participants. Based upon the combined results of the two studies, the final version of the SAQ was developed, which is comprised of 45 items that manifest good test-retest reliability, internal consistency, and convergent and discriminative validity. The SAQ can discriminate between abused and non-abused male and female participants.

If we pay any attention to the media at all these days, it might be easy for some of us to conclude that we are regularly visited by aliens who abduct innocent earthlings and perform repugnant medical procedures on them and harvest their sperm and eggs, that secret satanic rituals are being conducted in the basements of our neighbors' homes, and that some of us live our lives unaware that our bodies host a boggling array of personalities.Not much more than a decade or two ago, such beliefs would be viewed as implausible at best, embraced only by fringe elements of our society or the psychological community. Now, it seems, such beliefs are infused in mainstream culture and are reflected in the narratives that clients construct in psychotherapy. Such beliefs can no longer be dismissed as excesses of millenial thinking or as mere hokum, because therapists are finding increasingly that clients hold fast to imaginative narratives that contain this kind of content.

No abstract